Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I wanted to do something Halloweeny but I don't really like "scary" movies, so I ended up with this. Sorry I couldn't be more festive, haha.

Either you have seen this or you are staring at this post thinking "what the hell is this?". For those of you in the later group I will elaborate.

Back in 2008, there was the famous Writer's Guild of America Strike in Hollywood. The strike was because writers wanted to get better pay in comparison to what the studios were getting for their work. The strike lasted 14 weeks and almost nothing came out during that period. Except for Doctor Horrible.

Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was written by Joss Whedon (Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Zack Whedon (Fringe), spouses Jed Whedon and Maurissa Thancharoen (Dollhouse, Marvel's Agents of Shield). The family wanted to create something "small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike." The project, funded by Joss Whedon, only cost about $200,000. It premiered online as a web miniseries in three acts. It was a big success and has made more than it's small budget back in DVD/Blu-ray and iTunes sales. It was also well received by critics and has won serveal awards including an Emmy, Hugo Award, People's Choice Award, and several Streamys. Time magazine slotted it at #15 of their top 50 Innovations of 2008.

The entire run time of all three acts together is only 42 minutes. The story follows Dr. Horrible, (Neil Patrick Harris) a super villain who desperate to join a club of other super villains called "The Evil League of Evil" so he can impresses Penny (Felica Day) whom he's in love with. His plans are thwarted when Penny becomes romantically involved with superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), Horrible's arch nemeses.

As one might guess from the title, it's a musical! The short film features 14 songs. Here's one of my favorites:

The film is not only interesting because of the historical events in Hollywood at the time of it's release, but it is also extremely well done and just plan a lots of fun. I would highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen it should check it out!

Bring Our Heroes Home

I've always had a particular affinity for super-hero flicks. Spiderman was one of my first "favorite movies" outside of Disney animated films. I had read some comic books prior to the release of the film, and there was something special about watching the ink leap off the page and onto the big screen. Although I love the Nolan Batman, throughout my life, I've always been an ardent Marvel fan. There haven't been too many "duds" in the Marvel cinematic line-up, save a few, particularly those coming from 20th Century Fox. Recently, Marvel Studios has done a spectacular job under the tutelage of Joss Whedon and Disney. I think they've stuck a chord with the general public, a chord that reflects the nature of the Marvel Comics themselves. However, there is still an incomplete feeling in the total Marvel Universe, stemming from property rights.

In 2012, "The Avengers" became the 3rd highest grossing film of all time, and the highest grossing super-hero film. Although these summer blockbusters usually tend to do really well, there was something special about this film. I think the success of the film derives from the fact that this is essentially a crossover. It takes six heroes, four of whom had modern film adaptions, and pitted them against a common enemy. In each of the previous films based on only one hero, the hero struggles to save the world against a single enemy. If we assume that the badder the villain, the more action there will be, then a villain must be really really bad to warrant six super-heroes, and therefore the film will have a ton of action. In another sense, the very idea that some of a fan's favorite characters will be featured in the same movie is a big enough draw in itself.

"The Avengers" did not reinvent the wheel when it comes to crossovers. Crossovers have been a particularly good way to increase viewership in almost every medium in the past century. Successful video games such as Supersmash Bros. and Marvel vs. Capcom pit different characters in battle. Cartoons like "Scooby Doo" often featured notable celebrities and characters in episodes such as Scooby Doo Meets Batman and Bravo Dooby Doo. There were also numerous Flinstones and Jetsons crossovers. This trend doesn't apply only to cartoons and video games, successful television shows, geared toward adults, share characters, or feature characters from other shows for brief periods of time. There have been numerous CSI crossovers between "CSI: New York", "CSI", and "CSI: Miami". In comedy, the show "Friends" shared the character Ursula Buffay with "Mad About You".


The crossover has been an important tool throughout Marvel's history. There have been 86 official Marvel Comics crossovers to date, as well as an innumerable amount of brief, one issue cameos. Perhaps most recently and notably are Marvel's critically acclaimed Civil War comics, which pit nearly every super-hero in the Marvel Universe against each other in spectacular fashion. Featuring multiple heroes together has been at the roots of Marvel's success, success that the "The Avengers" was able to tap into.

As of right now, Marvel Studios, owned by Disney, still has control of the rights to a majority of the heroes in the Marvel canon. However, the heroes they don't own are integral parts of the the Marvel Universe. Twentieth Century Fox has the rights to the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Elektra. Sony Pictures owns both Spiderman and Ghost-Rider. Lionsgate owns Punisher, and New- Line Cinema owns Blade.

Now, I'm not saying that the fact that the Marvel properties are scattered leads to inherently bad films. This wouldn't be either fair or true. Movies such as X-Men : First Class, have been spectacular. The Spiderman films, both in the early 2000's and recently, have been a consistent hit. However, they seem very one dimensional, being trapped in a microcosm of the larger Marvel Universe. I'm sure it's frustrating for the people working on the projects as well. There was recently a story about how Hugh Jackman was supposed to make a cameo in the Sam Raimi Spiderman movies as Wolverine, but was unfortunately not able to because of legal issues. That's so unfortunate because the Wolverine- Spiderman dynamic is one of the most fun in the entire Marvel Universe. There so many things that can be done with a complete set of heroes, and it's unfortunate that there are things standing in the way of creating the best product possible. The reason phase one of Marvel's plan of movies was so successful was because the creators realized that each individual story played into a larger one, and gave little nods  to the fans here and there to get that point across.

So, I'm making a plea to Disney. Your buying powers are simply amazing. You flexed your muscle last year by purchasing Lucasfilm for a whopping 4.6 Billion. Bring your stranded super-heroes home. It's in your best interest. Your current model is working. It's what I want, and it's what you should want. Make the Marvel cinematic universe whole.

Nolan In The Deep

As I lie in my bedroom, my eyes slowly, slowly closing, checking Facebook right before I pass out into my first full night of sleep in God knows how long... I SEE THIS:

Christopher Nolan Taking Over Justice League, Bringing Bale Back As Batman

And then I explode and die at the same time.

The idea of Christopher Nolan running the entire DC Universe is an exciting one for me, considering that Joss Whedon (another critically acclaimed writer/director) has more or less taken charge of the Marvel Universe, and these two opposing viewpoints bring a very interesting contrast in tone to the table.

The movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have very much adopted the tone of comic books, with larger-than-life characters, bright colors and snappy repartee. Conversely, Nolan's Batman universe is filled with steely grays and muted blues, telling the story of the Caped Crusader in a gritty, down-to-earth way. He has furthered this vision by producing DC's new Superman movie, Man of Steel, with one of the main questions during production being "how would the world react if Superman existed?"

Over the course of the past year, there have been abundant rumors regarding a possible DC Justice League movie to combat Marvel's immense success with the Avengers, which has scared me as a massive fan of the direction of Christopher Nolan and Zak Snyder's DC superhero movies. But more importantly, I think that DC would lose their biggest weapon: their unique voice and tone. The Dark Knight trilogy was an entirely different entity than the Marvel movies, and as Green Lantern demonstrated, DC can't beat Marvel at their own game.

If the DC universe (including the Justice League) can be united under Christopher Nolan's vision, they have a chance of continuing to combat Marvel's movie dominance. Otherwise, they will be poorly imitating, in typical Hollywood fashion, and they will lose.

Also, as a continuity junkie, the prospect of Christian Bale returning as Batman in the Justice League, alongside Henry Cavill as Superman, makes me happy all over.

Avengers

Hollywood loves it's franchises, for they are extremely marketable. If the book, item, show, ect, is popular enough, it will become a movie. This is has happened most often with comics. So far Batman, Spiderman, The Hulke, ect, have become movies. There's nothing wrong with this, in a lot of cases these movies are good, but the stories are starting to get a little predictable.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, "Some all powerful government thing has an energy source that can be used as a continuous renewing source of energy. But there's a bad guy who wants to use it for his own ends. Stealing ensues, there's brain washing, a short fight scene, we've all seen it before. So our friendly neighborhood government agency gathers a team to take out the bad guy and get the energy source back. However there is a clash of the personalities and this idea falls flat, until some emotional trigger makes them wake up and realize "We are screwed if we don't get our act together!!!" This culminates is the traditional small group of good guys vs. the bad guy and his army of minions from another galaxy. And as is traditional the good guys win because of a combination of luck, the smarts of a couple of the characters, and sheer brute strength."

We have seen this in countless movies over the last ten years, namely in Super Hero movies (see Batman, Spiderman, the Fantastic Four 1&2, ect). Frankly this is starting to become a formula, and therefore boring.

The Avengers is decently done. The cinematography is o.k. and the effects are decent, but we hardly get more than a couple of seconds with them. This leads to the theory that the producers shaved a couple of thousand off the effects budget. but this is just a theory. The real problem with this movie is the story.

It's not that it's not well written, it's written decently and some parts give some interesting insight into the characters. Heck in some parts the characters have you completely fooled, and that is GREAT!!! When a character fools you it makes you believe in the story, it puts you in the movie. However the story in and of itself was boring. It's been done, several times, and that's all that can be said about it.

I Hold a PHD in Horribleness.

In 2008, during the most recent Writers Guild of America strike, brothers Joss, Jed, and Zack Whedon created Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Shortly after its release, this three part miniseries became a huge internet sensation. Besides having the talented minds of Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and his brothers, the project boasted talented actors like Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother), Felicia Day (The Guild), Nathan Fillion (Castle), and Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory). Over the span of forty-three minutes, there are fourteen incredibly catchy songs and loads of quotable dialogue (I've had some of the lyrics stuck in my head all day thus I felt the need to blog about it).
Dr. Horrible is a villain with a video blog who updates his viewers regularly on his various villainous schemes. On the vlog he mentions his progress on his Freeze Ray that will stop time, how he melted gold bars to destroy the status quo, and what advances he has made toward his 'laundry buddy,' Penny. However Dr. Horrible, also known as 'Billy buddy,' inadvertently introduced Penny to his arch-nemesis Captain Hammer. Being a ladies man, Captain Hammer instantly sweeps Penny off her feet and Dr. Horrible tries to win her back at the Laundromat, but the more he tries to win Penny's heart, the further away Dr. Horrible gets from his objective, which is to get into the Evil League of Evil. With Captain Hammer always foiling his plans, Dr. Horrible must find a way to win the girl and obtain a spot in the League.
This miniseries is hilarious yet I somehow find myself often on the verge of tears because that's what Whedon does. He makes you laugh and get emotionally invested in the characters, but then he tears your heart out.
Still, if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. This is something that I can watch over and over again.

"I aim to misbehave."

After the last class with Steve Gordon, we talked for a little about TV shows that, despite being amazing, were cancelled. I mentioned Firefly as one of those shows, and thought I would write a post about that show.

Now, I'm not a huge Joss Whedon fan in general. I haven't seen a lot of Buffy or Angel, and from what I have seen I enjoy it, but they're not something I would devote massive amounts of time to watching. But this show was a work of art. The writing is quick, witty, poignant, and has plots that keep you guessing forever.

This is a show that should never have gotten cancelled. I have never spoken to one person who had seen Firefly who didn't absolutely love it. Everything down to the physics in space is well thought out and brilliant.

Since Firefly only lasted one season, a movie was made to complete the story - Serenity.

It explores many themes, like control and familial love. We wonder how much the government should be allowed to interfere in peoples lives and brains (because, as a result of the government attempting to control and make placid an entire planet of people, a horrible type of "person" was created - Reavers.)

Long story short, I miss this show. It could have been made even greater than it was.